Over at Samizdatathey have an interesting post about how, according to the BBC, capitalism is causing famine in North Korea (as opposed to Stalinist communism being the root cause of that country’s ills). I particularly liked “Market reforms introduced in North Korea in recent years mean most people only get about half the food they need through the state and have to buy the rest themselves.” Click through to read … Continue reading →

I’m rather busy at the moment, so here are some quick links on several subjects all in one fell post. Coming Anarchy (a blog with the intriguing tagline “Speak Victorian – Think Pagan”) wasn’t impressed with the economic assumptions behind a BBC article called Living in Somalia’s Anarchy. Norman Geras agrees with many complainers that Jeremy Paxman and other media interviewers are too rude and dismissive to many political interviewees, … Continue reading →

The text of the Robin Aitken story is now up at Blithering Bunny. It’s written by Damien Thompson. Thanks to reader David H for the scan, and EU Referendumfor further highlighting the story. Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

…but the same conclusions. Helen Szamuely and The Rottweiler Puppy take on the BBC over bias. Helen reports the work of Robin Aitken, former BBC journalist: ‘Robin Aitken is writing a book on the BBC bias. He has already done a good deal of the research and marshalling of the material for a dossier he presented to the Governors in the 1990s. It was comprehensively ignored…’ Click through to read … Continue reading →

, the Beeb sees setback for Bush as a “blow by powerful Senate group”! (Surprise, the Senate is a political body comprised of Democrats, Republicans and one “Independent”. What is so surprising about a renegade Senator from the rustbelt who rocks the boat?) If you really want to know what’s happening, look elsewhere for factual reporting. The only surprise here is that Senator Voinovich, a Republican, did not vote to … Continue reading →

: The BBC’s story on Galloway contains this little gem: ”UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has been criticised over his son’s work with the programme, but he himself, in an interim report by a UN committee issued in March, was cleared of wrongdoing.” Of course, he was not cleared at all: “I thought we criticised him rather severely. I would not call that an exoneration,” Volcker told US network Fox … Continue reading →

David Aaronovitch, in his final column for the Guardian, describes what happened when he, a left-winger, decided not to oppose the Iraq war. All of a sudden I began to experience the left from the outside. And the first thing that struck me was its capacity for smug certainty and uniformity of response. Look at the cartoonists, whose work trumps debate. You may have Blair the poodle, Blair with blood-stained … Continue reading →

Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.

says that one of her correspondents tried sending similarly-worded posts referring to “racist/apartheid Israelis” and “racist/apartheid Palestinians” to a BBC messageboard in order to see which ones were removed. Since individuals are fallible, and different moderators will be on duty at different times, some inconsistency is to be expected. However there did seem to be a definite bias against Israel in the results. Click through to read and contribute comments … Continue reading →

Quick comment – one thing I did notice during the Beeb’s coverage of the election was that their trailers did at least refer to one of the choices being “who spends your money”… Click through to read and contribute comments on this post.